Bruins trading one problem for another?

Sunday

Dec 30, 2007 at 6:00 AM

Given that the Bruins have been balancing on a tightrope all season, it shouldn’t be any surprise to see them plummeting to earth in a death spiral that could make a real mess of their once-promising season.

The signs were there all along, but hardly visible because of the good things the B’s were doing. They were closer to disaster than it seemed even when they were cruising along at their peak with a 17-10-3 record — which, lest we forget, is really just 17-13 everywhere but in the NHL.

Digest these little morsels:

•The Bruins are 1-10-2 against the teams equal to, or above them, in the NHL standings, which says something about whether they really belong in the rarefied air of the Eastern Conference.

•When they were winning, it was almost exclusively because of the out-of-this-world goaltending of Tim Thomas and later Alex Auld, who made their trivial offense seem like… well, a trivial problem. With less than half the season gone, the B’s already have won nine games when scoring three goals or less — just five fewer than all last season.

•When they lose, it’s because they can’t put the old biscuit in the basket, as they like to say in Saskatoon. They’ve scored just one or two goals in 15 of their 19 losses. The fact that they haven’t been shut out yet is one of the great anomalies of the NHL’s first half.

•While their defensive play is to be applauded, the Bruins have to be the worst closers since Kyra Sedgwick. They’re a team dominated by role players, especially on offense, where they have one of the best table-setters in the league, Marc Savard, wasting his passes trying to set up inept finishers like P.J. Axelsson, Peter Schaefer, and — for a good chunk of the season — the slumping Glen Murray.

Which brings us to our first suggestion: Let’s forget about trying to spread the wealth and instead put the best goal-scorers alongside the best passer, which means placing Savard on the same line with Marco Sturm and Murray, when he returns from his hip flexor injury. We’ll even settle for Milan Lucic to clog up the middle and create traffic in front of the net. Anyone but Axelsson, who has the offensive touch of a water buffalo.

Boston’s offensive funk, complicated by a rash of injuries and some cooled-off goaltending, has been the sole difference between the team that went 10-4-1 between Nov. 10 and Dec. 12, and the team that was in a 1-5-1 rut — with just 15 goals in those seven games — before last night.

And now, from all accounts, the B’s could be on the verge of compounding their problems by making a trade from a classic position of weakness. General manager Peter Chiarelli is working the phones diligently and searching for help on offense and defense, but fans haven’t forgotten this team’s disastrous roster decisions of the past that cost New England star players like Joe Thornton, Brad Boyes, Mike Knuble, Brian Rolston, Michael Nylander and Sergei Gonchar, to name just a few.

There’s also another consideration here: if, and when, Patrice Bergeron might return to the lineup. His presence would be a huge plus given all of his skills — offense, penalty killing, body checking, the power play — and it would be insane to jump the gun with a major deal if he’s going to be back anyway by, let’s say, February, which is the latest hopeful projection.

Besides, who do you trade? Phil Kessel’s stock recently has plummeted in Boston, so maybe he’s a candidate, but that might be a move the Bruins would regret someday. Sturm, Savard, Murray and Zdeno Chara reportedly have clauses in their contracts that either bar trades or restrict them only to certain teams.

And if you deal Savard or Sturm, where does that leave your already-lame offense? Murray’s trade value, frankly, is limited by his age, salary ($4.15 million), and recent spotty production. Kessel, though the limitations in his game have become glaring recently, still could develop into a superstar in this league, and there are enough ex-Bruins already flirting with the NHL All-Star team right now, thank you.

That brings us back to Axelsson, whose name pops up as trade bait whenever the Bruins have a need. But you have to wonder just how much he’d bring in a deal. Besides, he reportedly also has a contract clause limiting the Bruins’ trade options.

The only thing that could help the B’s would be a trade in which they get multiple players in return, and the only player who could fetch something like that is Chara. But his $7.5 million salary would limit the teams that are interested, and there’s always the chance he could nix the deal.

Besides, do the Bruins really want to carry around the stigma of having traded their last two cover-boy captains — Thornton and Chara? Doubtful.

So what should they do? This writer says to ride it out, at least a little longer. Considering their recent slump, the Bruins haven’t lost that much ground in the Eastern Conference standings; yesterday, they were tied for fifth place with four other teams, four points behind Montreal, which needs only one more win against Boston to go 5-0 and clinch the head-to-head tiebreaker for the season.

Still, the signs aren’t that bleak. While they’re essentially just a .500 team now (18-15-4 with 97 goals scored and 98 goals against), the Bruins have outscored the opposition during five-on-five play, 60-48. In fact, they’ve given up the second-fewest five-on-five goals in the league, behind only Detroit’s 45.

It’s when players go to the penalty box that things get crazy. The Bruins have been outscored in power-play goals, 34-25; short-handed goals, 5-3; and in four-on-four situations, 6-3.

They’re 26th in the NHL in shots per game, 19th in goals per game, and 28th in penalty-killing. If they can clean up that last category, and they can get Bergeron, Murray, Andrew Alberts and Aaron Ward back from injuries, and if Thomas and Auld can still make the saves, this is still a team that can win — maybe not a Stanley Cup, but at least enough to return a battered franchise to respectability.

And look toward next season — again.

We’re two days away from the NHL Winter Classic in Buffalo, the league’s second-ever outdoor hockey game, which will pit the Sabres against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins at 1 p.m. Tuesday, New Year’s Day, on a hastily constructed rink at the reconfigured Ralph Wilson Stadium.

It will be televised on NBC (Channel 7 locally).

The NHL even got Bob Costas, who probably hasn’t seen a hockey puck in years, to handle the play-by-play. One of his color crew will be Bruins executive and former defenseman Mike Milbury.

Leave it to Milbury, who went to college at nearby Colgate in upstate New York, to have the liveliest comments about the attraction, talking about what it’s like to play hockey outdoors.

“It feels like … you’re skating at 40 miles per hour,” he said. “It’s that kind of passion that I grew up on, and it’s that kind of passion that will be even more on display in an outdoor game like this. I guarantee it. It’s going to be a special event. There will be no passengers on either team.”

Costas isn’t a total stranger to hockey. After all, he attended Syracuse University, broadcast the minor-league Syracuse Blazers in the 1970s, and later subbed for Dan Kelly when the legendary St. Louis Blues announcer was ill.

Unique is right. Depending on the weather, players could lose pucks in the sun. Views will be broadcast from an airplane circling above the stadium, presumably because blimps can’t always fly in the winter. The players will be in retro team jerseys with “football-sized numbers” for better viewing.

Construction to convert the stadium into an outdoor rink has been going on nonstop for a week now.

The game is expected to attract up to 74,000 fans, shattering the NHL record of 57,167 set in November 2003 when the Oilers and Canadiens battled in minus-20 temperatures in Edmonton.

The North American record for hockey attendance is 74,554, set in 2001 when Michigan State hosted Michigan at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich.

The long-range weather forecast for Buffalo on Tuesday is for a high temperature of around 34 degrees, with a 40 percent chance of snow showers.

One more thing: If you’re one of the 12 people in Worcester County subscribing to the NHL Network, be advised that on New Year’s Night, after the Winter Classic game, the NHL Network will broadcast a high-definition doubleheader with Tampa Bay at Toronto at 7:30, followed by Chicago at Los Angeles.

They’ve had more new faces than Joan Rivers, and sometimes they’ve been just as big a joke, but this year the Bruins have only one face that appeals to the masses — defenseman Zdeno Chara.

Chara is the second-leading vote-getter among defensemen for the Eastern Conference team that will start the NHL All-Star Game on Jan. 27 in Atlanta. As of Wednesday, Chara had 234,779 votes, trailing only Montreal’s Andrei Markov, who figures to be standing beside Chara when the puck is dropped.

Center Marc Savard, the only other Bruin on the ballot, is a distant 26th in the balloting for forwards with 25,048 votes. The top three vote-getters in that category are Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby (445,144), Tampa Bay’s Vincent Lecavalier (198,953) and Ottawa’s Daniel Alfredsson (197,693). Martin Brodeur of New Jersey leads the goalies, as he should, with 185,003 votes.

The league doesn’t issue reports on write-in votes, so we don’t know how many B’s goalie Tim Thomas has been able to muster.

The starters will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 8.

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